thoughton:digitallife Encoding for SmartMovie

Encoding for SmartMovie

Okay ... I've made some progress on SmartMovie. After spending hours reading every scrap of information I could find on the net, I've come up with a couple of processes for encoding SmartMovie files on OS X. There seems to be some sort of obscure bug in ffmpegX which means we have to demux and process our audio seperately before remuxing the final file.

Note: depending on the aspect ratio of your source movie, these are the resolutions you want to aim for when resizing (step 4 below)

4:3 -- 272x208
3:2 -- 320x208
1.66:1 -- 320x192
16:9 -- 320x176
1.85:1 -- 320x176
2.35:1 -- 320x128

METHOD 1
Pros: Works on a wide variety of formats
Cons: Needs QuickTime Pro, only works on movies you can open in QT Player

Required software:
DivX 5.1 Mac codec
ffmpegX 0.0.9h
QuickTime Pro

1. Open the movie in QuickTime Player.
2. In the Movie menu choose Get Movie Properties (cmd-J)
3. Select 'Video Track', select 'Size', click 'Adjust'
4. Drag the corner of the video until it is the correct size for your aspect ratio (see chart above), click 'Done'

Exporting video from QT Player
5. In the File menu choose 'Export', select 'DivX AVI', click 'Options'
6. Uncheck 'Audio', set framerate to 12.5, click 'Settings'
7. Set 'Encoding bitrate' to 120kbps, click OK
8. Click 'OK'
9. Change the name in the 'Save As' box, click 'Save'

Exporting audio from QT Player
10. In the File menu choose 'Export', select 'Sound to AIFF'
11. In iTunes, option-click the Advanced menu, choose 'Convert to mp3', choose your AIFF file. An mp3 version of your AIFF will appear in your iTunes library.
12. Drag the mp3 from your iTunes library onto your desktop, delete the mp3 from iTunes

Finishing up with ffmpegX
13. Drag the mp3 from your desktop onto the ffmpegX icon
14. In ffmpegX select the 'Audio file to mp3' preset
15. In the Audio tab enter an Audio bitrate of 32kbps, click Encode
16. In the Tools tab, click the first 'Browse' button, choose the AVI file you created in step 9
17. Click the second 'Browse' button, choose the mp3 from step 15
18. Choose AVI in the drop-down menu next to the 'Mux as...' button
19. Click 'Mux as...'

METHOD 2
Pros: Does not require QuickTime Pro, can encode directly from a vob
Cons: Limited to mpeg 1 and mpeg2

Required software:
ffmpegX 0.0.9h
0sex (only if you wish to encode a movie from a vob file)

Doing everything with ffmpegX
1. In the Tools tab, click 'Browse', choose your mpeg or vob file, click 'Demux'
2. Drop the video file (the m1v or m2v created in step 1) onto the ffmpegX icon, choose the 'Xvid' preset
3. In the Video tab, set bitrate to 120kbps, 12.5fps, screen size according to the aspect ratio of your source movie (see table above), click 'Encode'
4. Drop the audio file (created in step 1) onto the ffmpegX icon, choose the 'Audio file to mp3' preset
5. In the Audio tab, set bitrate to 32kbps, click 'Encode'
6. In the Tools tab, click the first 'Browse' button and choose the avi file created in step 3
7. In the Tools tab, clock the second 'Browse' button and choose the mp3 file created in step 5
8. Choose AVI in the drop-down menu next to the 'Mux as...' button
9. Click 'Mux as...'

After both methods you should end up with a file named 'yourmoviename.muxed.avi'. This movie should play at full screen in SmartMovie.

Using the values I've given above you should get about 10mins of video per 9MB file size. The video shows some compression artifacts and the audio is slightly tinny, but both are acceptable. You can experiment with changing the video and audio bitrates to achieve whatever quality is suitable. For example for a music video you would probably want to increase the audio bitrate to at least 64kbps, while for high speed, wide angle footage (like sports) increasing the video bitrate will help.

A 21 minute episode of the Simpsons encoded with the above settings comes out to 18.1MB (12.1MB video, 4.8MB audio, plus overhead)

Posted on 23 May 2004, to How To... | Mac OS X | Mac Video | Mobile | Sony Ericsson P800

Related entries

RealVideo to SmartMovie - 26 August 2004
Full screen video on the P800 - 21 May 2004
Real Mplayer - 9 October 2004
Converting Ogg (ogm) and Matroska (mkv) video - 15 June 2004
Smartmovie - now with mpeg4 video - 15 March 2006
From iMovie to YouTube, a.s.a.p. - 28 March 2007
Fairly major ffmpegX update - 24 January 2005
Video on your old iPod - 13 August 2005
CrystalPlayer Mobile for UIQ - 8 December 2004

Comments

Note: In method 1 step 5 above, if you have a problem exporting to DivX 5.1 (resulting in incomplete footage), try exporting to uncompressed AVI first, and then re-exporting from the AVI to DivX. This helped me out with some out-of-spec mpeg1 blooper clips I received over email.

by: thoughton at May 23, 2004 3:10 PM

Hi there,
I wonder if u could help me,

I have sony-p900 with symbian OS installed and am trying to play a smartmovie converted AVI file, but it's coming up with error "No codec for video format: WMV3 Download from lonelycatgames.com" but I cant seem to get the codec from lonlycatgames.
pls help!

waliul

by: waliul at June 9, 2004 12:16 PM

WMV3 means your AVI contains video in the Windows Media 9 video format, whereas SmartMovie format is supposed to be AVI containing video in the Xvid format. The PC SmartMovie converter should automatically convert everything to the Xvid AVI format, but it apparently hasn't in this case.

Are you sure this AVI file was produced by SmartMovie Converter? I have very little experience doing video stuff on a PC (all Mac), but I am guessing that SmartMovie Converter on your PC doesn't understand WMV3 video (do you have Windows Media 9 installed?), and therefore didn't convert the video (just the audio). This is just an educated guess though.

by: thoughton at June 9, 2004 6:20 PM

There is a new version of ffmpegX (0.0.9k) out which supports low sample rates (thanks for listening Major!) so you shouldn't have to demux the source movie anymore. Just choose xvid preset and then input both the video AND audio settings under the appropriate tabs. I'm testing now, but if it works it will render Method 1 obsolete.

by: thoughton at June 15, 2004 12:34 AM

cool

by: amelie at June 19, 2004 12:00 PM

Great news! Major has just released ffmpegX 0.0.9L which has almost totally fixed the Xvid-Smartmovie compatibility problem!

In this new version you can simply choose the Xvid preset, plug in your settings (bitrates, fps, size, etc) and hit 'encode'. The output file works perfectly in SmartMovie, the time index is correct, AND it has sound at the correct bitrate and sample rate! At the moment this seems to work great for mpeg and avi files. However there is still a problem with mov files (the output file still has no audio).

by: thoughton at June 20, 2004 11:35 PM

I prefer PacketVideo! But I have P900, I think on P800 it has no full screen!

by: Joseph Tse at July 8, 2004 1:21 AM

:mad:
:shock: